I catch it mid-throb: the pump’s arm bites the air inside this hollowed ice cathedral, metal sighing, sparks skipping where someone cuts or welds at the junction. Pipes muscle forward like cold arteries, rust bleeding through frost. Their weight hums under my boots. Lamps glow sickly along the wall, not quite night, not quite workday, that lavender afterlight pooling in the cave’s dome. Figures in insulated suits pace the lines, shoulders bowed, offering heat and hours to keep the flow obedient. The words Where Vojta? scrape along the pipe’s flank, iced over, weeping amber drips as if the question itself sweats. Shackles or rings lie scattered near the trench, small circles of loss abandoned in the snow; a tin mug tips on its side, breath long gone, smelling faintly of metal and old steam. This place exists because someone believed extraction might answer absence. We dug, welded, froze, and listened. Tell me—if the pipe remembers every pressure, why does it refuse to tell us where Vojta is? He remains unaccounted for.